Implemening the Directive 2012/29/EU with Victims of Corporate Crime and Corporate Violence: First Findings

This book chapter stems from a EU-funded project entitled 'Victims and Corporations' (www.victimsandcorporations.eu). The project’s first findings are presented in the collective publication of which this essay is only one among various interdisciplinary contributions. European Union Directive 2012/29/UE introduces a ‘system’ of minimum standards on the rights, support and protection for victims of crimes, and their participation to criminal proceedings, without prejudice to the rights of the offender. Within the scope of the Directive and its definition of ‘victim’, though, there is a relevant group of victims who have not yet received enough consideration, and whose access to justice may be at stake. It is the victims of corporate crimes, and particularly of corporate violence, meaning those criminal offences committed by corporations in the course of their legitimate activities, which result in harms to natural persons’ health, integrity, or life. Within the vast area of corporate crime, the project focuses on three main strands of victimisation: environmental crime, food safety violations and offences in the pharmaceutical industry with the aim to explore intersections and potential synergies between Directive 2012/29/EU and the existing body of EU legal tools in these three sectors. The book chapter provides a first outline of the issues raised by the implementation of the 'Victims Directive' in cases of corporate violence. Victims of corporate violence appear to be a further category of vulnerable subjects. Victims of corporate violence also appear to have a ‘specific’ need to receive appropriate information, support and protection, and to be supported and made ‘able to participate in criminal proceedings’. Asymmetry of information and of means between individual victims and corporate offenders has heavy repercussions on corporate victims’ recognition, support, protection and access to justice and fair judicial decisions. The rights and safeguards of the suspected and the accused persons (be them individuals or legal entities) are constantly kept in mind in order to counterbalance the risks of a ‘victim-centred’ paradigm, which may put fundamental principles of criminal law and criminal procedure at stake.